Malaysia Days #5-6

 Hello to our faithful blog followers! The past two days in Malaysia have been full of family time, mahjong, and more food! Again, I missed out on a couple of things because I didn't have my camera, but here are a bunch of pictures of some things we've eaten in the past two days.

On Tuesday morning, after I published my blog, we had some pastries as a snack after breakfast. This is a picture of one type that we had. This one is a little flaky bun filled with red bean paste (sweet). There were also ones with kaya (another sweet jam) and a savory one. These are so yummy, and especially delicious with coffee!

Derren and I were playing mahjong with his family, and Derren kept losing, so he blamed it on the fact that we hadn't drank any coffee. So at about 12:30pm, we went for a "coffee run" and ended up getting lunch. We first stopped by a vegetarian restaurant so that I could pick up something for lunch. I was so excited to have all of these choices - all filled with fake meat and fake fish. All I had to do was get some rice and fill it up with what looked good...and only for a couple of dollars!

Here is what I ended up with - some fake barbeque pork on the bottom left, green vegetables with little chunks of fake pork, and fake beef with vegetables. There is a pile of rice beneath it all. Most people don't find the fake meat very good, but for someone like me who doesn't eat regular meat, I find it pretty tasty. At least it has a good amount of protein and is more than just noodles!

After we picked up the vegetarian food, we went to another restaurant to get food for the rest of the family - about seven orders of chicken rice. This is Derren's food in the picture below. It is chicken rice (rice cooked in chicken broth) with chicken cut up on top, and a little bit of vegetables. It comes with a sweet and sour sauce and soy sauce. Oh, and don't worry, we stopped by the coffee shop after we picked up all this food to get Derren and I our coffee! :)

The rest of the afternoon was again full of mahjong and just hanging around with his family. I know this sounds super boring, but it is quite a fun game - and good for people to hang out together instead of just sitting around and watching TV or something. And it definitely exercises your brain!

For dinner we had plans to drive quite a distance to get a handmade noodle soup. Knowing that I probably wouldn't get much but noodles, Derren made me this 2 egg omelette with tomatoes, chives, and spring onions to take with us so that I would have something more substantial with my noodles. (And in my opinion, this was one of the best parts of my dinner!!!)

Here's what my dinner from the restaurant looked like. Noodles. They are very yummy, and thick noodles. We drove about 45 minutes to get to this place because the noodles are so famous. Sorry the picture is so bright...

And this is what everyone else ate. This is another version of the yong tau foo. Family style fish past and bean curd to eat along with everyone's individual bowl of noodles and soup. The fried ones on the left are bean curd skin with fish paste (I think), and the bowl has fish balls and tofu. I actually ended up being able to eat some of the tofu because it didn't have fish paste in it!

 And here's what the noodle soup looked like that everyone ate with the fish paste stuff. These noodles are called "rat tail" noodles just because of their thickness and shape.

Then yesterday we ate a very small breakfast with some instant coffee (the REAL Ipoh kind) at home, and around 11am we went for brunch at the mall food court (which actually has really good food compared to the mall food courts that we all think of) with some more of Derren's aunts and great aunts.  One good thing about a food court is that there are a lot of options, so there was a "vegetarian" stall with lots more choices of vegetarian food and fake meat. Here's a picture of the food court - it is very clean and nice compared to many of the food centers that we've been eating at!

And here is the plate of food I got from the vegetarian stall. There is some vegetarian fried rice with fake pork, some yams with fake chicken, green vegetables, and some fried thing (I honestly don't even know what it was trying to imitate, but it was good!)

Derren and much of his other family had "sizzling mee" (mee = noodles) with chicken for lunch. The black plate is actually like a hot pot, and the food comes out boiling when they give it to you.

And some of his family shared more "yong tau foo" - more fish paste and fried stuff. I obviously didn't eat any of this.

 And then the real reason that we met at the mall food court is to go to a particular stall that makes really good "ice kacang" (pronounced kaa-chong; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_kacang). It's a shaved ice dessert with many variations.  This is the one they served - it's a icy cold sweet dessert.

But instead of ice kacang, Derren and I ordered a different variation, called chendol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chendol). This one has a brown sugar syrup and red beans, and I much prefer it to ice kacang!

 After lunch, Derren, Monique, and I stayed at the mall to walk around and window shop for a while. Derren is not used to mall shopping, so he had to stop and take a break...

After we made the mall loop (this was a small mall - only two stories - compared to the malls in Singapore!), we had his aunt come and pick us up. And on the way home, I was craving something cold to drink, so his aunt took us to this little stand on the side of the road to get some sugar can juice (and coconut juice for Derren). They put the entire sugar canes through the machine that you can see in front of this man. Then they just put the juice in a bag with ice (only about 50 cents!)

Yum!!! Sugar Cane juice...so refreshing!

And when we got home, it was time for a couple more hours of mahjong before dinner. Derren's dad took a picture of me drinking my sugar can juice from the bag I had dangling on my chair while playing mahjong - this basically sums up my life in Malaysia right now! :)

For dinner, we finally had some home cooked food!! Derren's aunt and uncle from Australia joined us for dinner as usual, so the nine of us gathered around the small table to share this home cooked food. There was two different Chinese vegetables (the leafy one was boiled/steamed, and the celery looking one was stir fried). Then there was "lap chong" in the left of the picture - this is traditional Chinese sausage, and it's sliced up really thin. Then the two large containers have two different types of leftover curry - one is beef and one is chicken. In the back (or on the right of the picture) you can see salted eggs (basically they sit in salt water for like a month and then are hardboiled. They are SUPER salty). You can also see a bowl of savory rice (leftover from a few days ago, this rice was made with lap chong). Then in the picture on the right was my favorite dish - silky tofu with chives and garlic. It was very light and yummy! We also had rice, and I had a taro root (a starchy root vegetable). All of it was so delicious!

Well you can imagine what we did after dinner - more mahjong! And we also had about three different desserts, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures of any of them. We had a malaysian dessert from a stand on the side of the road called au-bong. It's like a VERY thin crepe and you can eat a bunch of them at once because they're so thin and light. Then we had a couple of little gelatinous rice cakes, and then later his aunt showed up with silken tofu in a sugar sauce. I had a little bit of everything, and as usual, was very full last night!

Then this morning, his aunt went out to the market to get me my favorite dessert for tonight - kaya rice! I will take pictures and explain it in my next blog. But while she was out she picked up breakfast for us - char kway teow (a fried flat noodle with some bean sprouts and a little bit of green vegetables). I had a cup of coffee after that, and for lunch I think we are going to a vegetarian restaurant! And dinner is going to be a "famous" wonton noodle made by this little old man for many many years. I will try to take lots of pictures! I hope you are all enjoying your meals as much as we are!

Breakfast:

Ashley & Derren

Malaysia Days #4-5

So not much to report in the past couple of days - lots of sitting around trying to stay cool, playing mahjong, and of course, eating! I thought I would just share a few of the things we've eaten in the past couple of days. I didn't even take pictures of all of the things - I need to get better about getting my camera out even at the house when we are eating desserts and snacks!

On Sunday night for dinner, we went to this restaurant in Ipoh to get chicken and noodle soup with Derren's entire family. Here is a picture of the restaurant that we ate at. You can see that their restaurants are open to the outside with chairs and tables outside of the restaurant.

Here is the chicken that they chop up for you - it is served family style, so everyone at the table picks pieces to eat with their soup. This picture is a half of a chicken.

And the only other thing that this restaurant serves is bean sprouts. So each person gets noodle soup, and then the chicken and bean sprouts are served family style. This are just stir-fried with a soy sauce.

And here is a picture of the soup - it is just a chicken broth with noodles in it. And hot chili sauce for Derren of course!

And here was my option - noodles (no soup because it's chicken) and soy sauce. Pretty boring, but it was hot and tasty with the bean sprouts!

And during dinner, Derren and I shared a Sarsi. This is a soft drink that is tough to find in the US. I've seen it at some Asian markets before though. It tastes like a cross between root beer and Dr. Pepper. It's VERY yummy!

In the morning, Derren's mom and aunt ran out to get us all breakfast, and then we ate at the house. This was Derren's breakfast - it's a curry noodle soup with chicken.

And I had chee chong fun again. You might remember from the last post that this is just a thick chewy rice noodle. This time I poured that entire bowl of sauce over the top for more flavor - it's like a slighty spicy hoisin (which is typically sweet) sauce. We also ate some fruit to balance out the meal. :)

And then the majority of the days have been spent playing mahjong. It's an Asian rummy game played with these tiles. You can see the cheat sheet that his aunt had to make for Derren and I so that we could read the Chinese characters on the tiles. It only took about a day before we had them all down.

And just another shot of the table where we've spent many hours playing with his family.

This is what the set-up looks like when you start a game:

And here is one game that I sat out on - Derren played with his uncle, dad, and aunt. She was sitting in my place, winning some more points for me! (Typically this game is played with money, but we use "points" instead of money.)

Then for dinner last night we went to a place with many different "stalls" to eat at. Here's a picture of Derren and his dad looking at the options for a cold drink to accompany dinner:

And this is a picture I took from where we were sitting of the eating area - all of the stalls are on the right hand side, and the parking is on the left.

Here's a picture from before our food arrived. Derren's aunt is doing the ritual cleaning of the chopsticks and spoons. When you go anywhere to eat in Malaysia (except the expensive sit down places) you have to bring a box (or small packets) of tissues. They don't give you napkins anywhere. And they use the tissues to clean all the utensils and the table. You can also see the drinks that we got. Derren's yellow drink is passionfruit juice, Monique's light green drink is guava juice, and my orange one is carrot juice (although I suspect they added condensed milk because it was so creamy and sweet).

And again I ate stir fried noodle in soy sauce - this time with a little bit of vegetable. This noodle was more like a thin chow mein noodle.

And Derren had the same noodles but with barbeque pork and prawns, accompanied by wonton noodle soup.

And right after he ate that, he tried this small version of nasi lemak. This is a Malay food that we are planning on eating for real in the next couple of days. I will tell you more about it when we actually eat it. After dinner we went home for more mahjong, and I had a sticky rice dessert (but forgot to take a pic!)

And this morning for breakfast it was sticky rice and fruit for me, more noodle soup for Derren!

I will keep posting every few days to show you some more of the food we are eating and things we are doing...hopefully besides just playing mahjong all day long!

Ashley & Derren

Malaysia Days #2-3

So we've officially completed almost two days in Malaysia, and have already had four cups of coffee, and some of the food we most enjoy! The morning after we arrived, we got up around 8am to head out to breakfast - we went to the coffee shop that is the home of the original Ipoh white coffee! This is the "kopi" (Malay word for coffee) that we have been waiting for!

And here is the other dish that we have been looking forward to - one of my favorites! This is "chee chong fun", which is a flat rice noodle dish. Obviously, mine is the one on the right - without the pork soya sauce and hot chilis!

Derren also had some tofu (with fish paste in it) soup, and I had a red bean ball (a fried rice dough ball with red bean paste in the middle - very sweet and tasty!)

This is a picture of the famous coffee house that we were eating this breafast at - you can see Derren's dad and aunt sitting at the table with us, and at the table behind them is Monique (Derren's sister), Jenny (Derren's mom), and Derren's grandmother and his uncle. This place was SO busy because it was a Saturday morning, and they make the best coffee in town! In Asia, when you go to a restaurant that's busy, you stand around a table while people are still eating to "claim it" and make them hurry to finish. It seems SO rude to me, but that's just the way you do it. You can see also in this picture the people standing and waiting for their table.

During the day we just spent some time at Derren's grandmother's and we RE-learned how to play mahjong (we had learned four years ago when we were here, but had forgotten how to play!). His two uncles and two aunts taught Derren, his mom and dad, and myself how to play.

For dinner, we had planned to have a fancy meal at one of the nice sit-down restaurants. Derren and I bought dinner for his whole family as a "repayment" for all of the food they are going to feed us, all the driving they will do for us, and the free lodging of course!
Here is a picture of Derren and I before the nice dinner, in front of the restaurant:

And here is a photo of Monique and I before dinner:

This is a photo from inside of the restaurant - we actually saw TWO WHITE PEOPLE when we were leaving (besides me of course!) This is pretty amazing since Ipoh is a relatively small town with few tourists at all! Inside this restaurant there was also a wedding reception going on.

So now some photos of the food that was served. When we first arrived, there was plates of fried prawn crackers as an appetizer. Then the first course was the suckling pig (a baby pig). First the fried skin is eaten with some hoison sauce and on the little buns. Then they take the pig back and cut it all up into pieces so that the meat can be eaten.

The next course was a grouper - Derren's uncle had picked this one out from the tank of fish swimming around. After Derren and I saw the bill later, we learned that this steamed fish cost $100 (that is REALLY expensive for Malaysian standards!) But according to everyone at the table, this fish was absolutely delicious. Derren said it didn't even taste fishy at all. And don't worry, Derren's aunt ate the head. No wasting of this expensive fish!

I didn't catch this dish quick enough to take a picture, but this is a vegetable dish with chunks of beef cooked into it (I think). Again, quite popular! And you can see to the left of the dish is the cut up suckling pig from earlier, all the legs and everything!

This was the first of my dishes - I know it looks boring compared to some of the previous dishes, but it was delicious! Bean curd (aka tofu) with vegetables:

And this was another type of bean curd, but this one has a layer of fish paste on top of the bean curd:

This is the second fish that was ordered (also picked out by Derren's uncle from the tank). This is a tilapia with a curry sauce and some vegetables. This one only cost less than $30, but was just as popular!

And here's the second thing I ate. This is a vegetarian fried noodle dish. It's already half gone because I had started eating it. :) And I did share this dish with Derren and a few others - everyone liked it!

And finally, for "dessert" we had a fruit plate. This is watermelon, honeydew, and papaya covered in ice. A tasty treat to end a delicious meal!

And here is a photo of the whole group - I spy something white....oh wait, that's just me. :)

In the back row, starting from the left is Derren's dad, Monique, Derren's Uncle Chee Yeng (from Kuala Lumpur), Uncle Chee Kit (from Singapore), Derren, me, and Derren's mom Jenny. Then in the front row, starting from the left is Derren's grandmother, Auntie Wendy, Ima (another of Derren's aunts), Ima's husband, Uncle Francis (from Australia), and his wife.

We then came back to the house and played mahjong until midnight. :) This morning we had to get up by 8am again for breakfast. This is the alley behind the restaurant we went to, where some of the tables are. Although it's slightly dirtier back here, it was actually much cooler because it's in the shade. You can see that Derren's dad and sister have already claimed tables for us.

And on the way to the restaurant his aunt and mom picked this up for a treat. This is a pancake type thing with crushed peanuts in it - sweet and delicious!

And here is Derren with his family (you can see our iced coffee - although it is definitely not as good from this place!)

And another shot from the other end of the table.

They had very few options for me, so I ate just plain noodle with soy sauce on it. Pretty boring, but I didn't really have a choice.

Meanwhile, everyone else at "yong tau foo", which is a Chinese soup dish. Each person gets a bowl of soup with noodles, and then there are a bunch of things brought out for everyone to share to eat with their soup. Each of these things contains some kind of shrimp or fish paste. So on the bottom left there is eggplant fried with fish paste, top left is a root vegetable with fish paste, the large soup bowl has tofu with fish paste and fish balls, and then the fried things are fried bean curd with fish paste.

After breakfast we came back to the house for more mahjong. (Oh, and on the way home we had picked up an iced coffee from the "good" place!)

Now we've just been relaxing, and will eat some home cooked food for lunch. And I have no idea what's in store for dinner... I will keep you updated about our delicious endeavors!!!

Ashley & Derren